“Students . . . are unable to take advantage of the lessons offered by previous successes and failures because they lack knowledge of their history, especially their history as students in one wing of the liberation struggle. This is to say that historical discontinuity is another characteristic feature of the present wave of student activism. And it means that unless students begin to learn from the past, they/we face the danger of taking roads that lead to dead-ends, diversions, co-optation, and prolongation of national independence. To be properly oriented, we have to know that we are an oppressed nation. To be oriented is to know who we are; where we are; how we got here; why we got here; where we need to go; and how to get there. We have to know all this so that we can correctly interpret and understand local struggles and issues, and so we can make the proper connections between all struggles and issues in our thinking and practice. All local struggles are parts of the national liberation struggle.”
Atiba Shanam, Vita Wa Watu Book Ten
“Black men, throughout their history in America, have manifested nationalist sentiment. Some have always leaned toward separatist ideology and solutions . Even essentially integrationist and assimilationist thinkers have often had nationalist strains in their social philosophies. Thus, in 1897, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote : .
. . One ever feels his two-ness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings ; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder . The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self . In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes . . . that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon. . . .” W. E. B. Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People," Atlantic Monthly, LXXX (August 1897), 194-195. xxvi
Nationalist ideologies have been in the ascendant only at certain historical periods ; in others, the major emphasis has been on racial integration and assimilation. During four periods, nationalist sentiment in various forms has been prominent in Negro thought: the turn of the eighteenth century, roughly from 1790 to 1820; the late 1840s and especially the 1850s; the nearly half-century stretching approximately from the 1880s into the 1920s; and since the middle 1960s. In general, nationalist sentiment, although present throughout the black man's experience in America, tends to be most pronounced when the Negroes' status has declined, or when they have experienced intense disillusionment following a period of heightened but unfulfilled expectations.
This introductory essay will describe the chief recurring varieties of black nationalism and trace black nationalism as a whole in the main periods of black history in the United States . In a concluding section the three editors will present their differing interpretations of the nature and pattern of the phenomena they first describe.
The term "black nationalism" has been used in American history to describe a body of social thought, attitudes, and actions ranging from the simplest expressions of ethnocentrism and racial solidarity to the comprehensive and sophisticated ideologies of Pan-Negroism or Pan-Africanism . Between these extremes lie many varieties of black nationalism, of varying degrees of intensity.
The simplest expression of racial feeling that can be called a form of black nationalism is racial solidarity . It generally has no ideological or programmatic implications beyond the desire that black people organize themselves on the basis of their common color and oppressed condition to move in some way to alleviate their situation. The concept of racial solidarity is essential to all forms of black nationalism. The establishment of mutual aid societies and separatist churches in the late eighteenth century had little ideological justification beyond that of racial solidarity .
A more pronounced form of black nationalism is cultural nationalism. Cultural nationalism contends that black people in the United States or throughout the world-have a culture, style of life, cosmology, approach to the problems of existence, and aesthetic values distinct from that of white Americans in particular and white Europeans or Westerners in general. Mild forms of cultural nationalism say merely that the Afro-American subculture is one of many subcultures that make up a pluralistic American society. The most militant cultural nationalists assert the superiority of Afro-American culture usually on moral and aesthetic grounds-to Western civilization . Programmatic or institutional manifestations of cultural nationalism include the development of a body of social-science literature-history, philosophy, political science, and the like written from the Afro-American point of view; the unearthing and publicizing of all the past glories of the race; the development of a distinct Afro-American literature, art, and music; the formation of appropriate vehicles for the transmission of Afro American culture-newspapers, journals, theaters, artistic workshops, musical groups; the assertion of a distinct lifestyle and world view in such ways as assuming African or Arabic names, wearing African clothes, and speaking African languages.
Closely linked in forms and function to cultural nationalism is religious nationalism. Within the theological boundaries of Christianity are such nationalist assertions as that blacks should establish and run churches of their own, for their own people; that God, or Jesus, or both were black (the "Black Messiah" theme) ; that Afro-Americans are the chosen people . Religious nationalism has also taken non-Christian forms, as can be seen in such twentieth-century groups as the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple, the several varieties of black Jews, and the Yoruba Temple. A milder expression of religious nationalist feeling is manifested in the recent formation of black caucuses within the major Christian denominations. In Chicago in 1968 black Catholic priests conducted a "Black Unity Mass" to the beat of conga drums; they wore vestments of colorful African cloth and shared the altar with, among others, a Baptist preacher.
Economic nationalism includes both capitalist and socialist outlooks. The capitalist wing, or the bourgeois nationalists, advocates either controlling the black segment of the marketplace by attempting to establish black businesses and by "buy black" campaigns, or establishing a black capitalist economy parallel to the economy of the dominant society. Slightly to the left of the bourgeois nationalists are those who contend that formation of producer and consumer cooperatives is necessary. Further to the left are black nationalist socialists who feel that abolition of private property is a prerequisite for the liberation of the Negro people. (Such socialists should be distinguished from black integrationist socialists like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin .) At the opposite extreme are those who call for the reinstatement of preindustrial communalism. Black nationalist socialists tend to coincide with revolutionary nationalists who apply Marxian theory to the experience of Afro-Americans, whereas those who favor preindustrial African economic forms tend also to be militant cultural nationalists . Negro capitalists tend to be bourgeois in their political and cultural outlooks as well.
In the area of politics, black nationalism at its mildest is bourgeois reformism, a view which assumes that the United States is politically pluralistic and that liberal values concerning democracy and the political process are operative. Programmatic examples of such a view are the slating and supporting of Negro candidates for political office ; the drive for black political and administrative control of local and county areas where Negroes predominate; and the formation of all-black political parties. In contrast, revolutionary black nationalism views the overthrow of existing political and economic institutions as a prerequisite for the liberation of black Americans, and does not exclude the use of violence.
A most significant variety of black nationalism is emigrationism. From the earliest attempts of slaves to capture the ships bearing them to the New World in order to steer them back to Africa, a substantial number of black people have wanted to return to the ancestral homeland. However, to emigrationists for whom Africa was too far away in time and space, or unacceptable for other reasons, the West Indies, South America, Mexico, Canada, and even the island of Cyprus have been touted as potential homelands.
Related to emigration is what we may call territorial separatism, a term best applied to the view of those blacks who wanted a share of the country that their labor had made so prosperous but who had no illusions about living in peace and equality with white Americans . Territorial separatists advocated the establishment of all-black towns, especially in the South and Southwest, all-black states, or a black nation comprising several states . Recent and milder forms of territorial separatism are often linked to the concept of political pluralism and advocacy of "black control of the black community."
Implicit in many of these varieties of black nationalism is the international extension of racial solidarity in the doctrines of Pan-Negroism, or Pan-Africanism . Both foster the belief that people of African descent throughout the world have common cultural characteristics and share common problems as a result of their African origins, the similarity of their political oppression and economic exploitation by Western civilization, and the persistence and virulence of racist theories, attitudes, and behavior characterizing Western contact with people of African descent. Afro-American advocates of Pan-Negroism historically assumed that Afro-Americans would provide the leadership for any worldwide movement. Only recently, with the political independence of African nations, have Afro-Americans conceded that Africans themselves might form the vanguard in the liberation of all peoples of African descent.
The varieties of black nationalism are often not sharply delineated, nor are they mutually exclusive categories . Any one individual may assume any number of combinations of black nationalism. Moreover, nationalism and racial integration as ideologies or as programs have often coexisted in organizations, in theories, and in the minds of individual Negro Americans. To deal exclusively with the varieties of black nationalism in American history is not to suggest that only black nationalism existed. In fact, a book of documents on black nationalism is needed to correct the generally held view that integration and assimilation had an undisputed reign in the minds of black Americans. This book can serve to remind the reader that the problems of the complexities of human behavior are no less formidable where black folk are concerned. “
The challenge today is to unite all the diverse political energies of the black people in the United States of America in order to develop enough COMPELLING FORCE to achieve all the diverse aims. As I said previously,
“The essential point is this: the current world order is run according to COMPELLING FORCE. Now, who among us has enough COMPELLING FORCE to COMPEL the system of white supremacy to submit to our interest? Come on - which group? Jamaicans? African Americans? New Orleanians? Afro Cubans? Temne? Balanta? Nigeria? South Africa? Ghana? ....when you stop all the nonsense you are talking, you will realize that if any one group had enough COMPELLING FORCE to safeguard its interest, IT WOULD ALREADY HAVE DONE SO. So, when you all are finished with petty emotionalism and how you feel about it, and either return to or come up to both a common and scientific understanding of the COMPELLING FORCE of white supremacy used against ALL of us, then you will realize that the reason why we come together and forget all the distinctions between us is because of the overriding imperative to develop enough COMPELLING FORCE to effectively oppose white supremacy and all the nations it has built.”
Consider the issue of COMPELLING FORCE with regard to the Reparations Movement. In the book, The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices edited by Richard F. America, William Darity, Jr writes:
"The later 1960s and early 1970s - a period of great social activism and ferment in the United States -witnessed a surge in calls from black Americans for reparations. . . . The rationale was twofold. First was a 'moral justification deriving .... from the debt owed to Blacks for the centuries of unpaid slave labor which build so much of the early American economy, and from the discriminatory wage and employment patterns to which Blacks were subjected after emancipation.' Second was a justification based on 'national self-interest' . [Robert S. Browne, director and founder of the Black Economic Research Center] perception that such 'gross inequalities' in the distribution of wealth would only further aggravate social tensions between black and whites.
Apparently, neither justification subsequently has proved COMPELLING for American legislators. No scheme of reparations of the type Browne advocated [wealth transfers] ever has been adopted in the United States."
How can sufficient COMPELLING FORCE be created? For starters, this can best be done through unification - there is strength in numbers. But what framework allows such diverse political interests to unite? The answer is through the process of a
UNITED NATIONS SPONSORED PLEBISCITE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION FOR DESCENDANTS OF PEOPLE WHO SURVIVED THE CRIMINAL AND GENOCIDAL MIDDLE PASSAGE TO THE COLONIES THAT BECAME THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The following article will take a historical look at nationalism and the failure to develop a BLACK UNITED FRONT by focusing on the era from 1792 to 1861.
